Academic literature on the topic 'European Terra cotta sculpture'

This dissertation presents a new history of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italian glazed terracotta sculpture. Invented by Luca della Robbia in 1430s Florence, the medium even today remains synonymous with the Della Robbia name. Luca founded a prolific family workshop that continued to produce sculpture following his distinctive methods, and in some cases re-using his molds and other visual models. While most scholarship to date has focused on questions of attribution, this project instead investigates the artists’ methods for the codification and transmission of their distinctive technology and style, as well as the attractions that glazed terracotta held for Renaissance viewers. The Della Robbia remained the dominant practitioners of the medium for over a century, but they did not hold a monopoly: the dissertation, therefore, also considers the contemporary Buglioni workshop and other artists who contributed to collaborative projects. Building upon recent work by conservators and materials scientists, the first chapter provides a comprehensive synthesis of the materials and techniques of glazed terracotta, in order to offer new insights into the development of the technology in the hands of Luca and his successors. Chapter 2 uses a variety of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century written sources to explore how early modern Florentines conceived of and responded to sculptures in this new medium and the processes by which they were created. Through a close reading of Luca’s will and related litigation, Chapter 3 demonstrates that the sculptor considered the art in which he instructed his nephew, Andrea, to be a form of intangible property with real financial value. The second half of the chapter examines series of closely related sculptures in order to shed light on the materials and mechanisms that facilitated transmission of knowledge and consistency in design across generations. Chapter 4 explores the appeal of this visual consistency for contemporary viewers by studying a variety of instances where glazed terracotta was used to shape devotional experience and characterize sacred environments and objects. The fifth chapter examines the structure of the Della Robbia shop as it evolved over the last decades of its existence, demonstrating that collaborations were crucial to all stages of artistic production. Instead of attempting to discern each sculptor’s individual contribution to joint projects, my study considers the nature of these partnerships, together with early modern conceptions of authorship. The conclusion draws attention to the longstanding legacy of glazed terracotta sculpture across Europe and outlines possibilities for future research. By locating the history of glazed terracotta within a broader narrative of Renaissance sculpture, one defined not by biographies but rather by technologies, this dissertation aims to highlight the coexistence and reciprocity of the exceptional and the everyday, of processes of invention and repetition, and of the individual artist and the workshop.

Portable objects made of terracotta, stone, and bronze, among other materials, stylistically linked to cultural spheres around the eastern Mediterranean basin and further inland in the Near East, Cyprus, and Egypt, were dedicated with fervor at Greek sanctuaries during the Archaic period. Previously, such votive offerings were superficially interpreted as “foreign imports” and enumerated in oversimplified tallies and exoticizing lists of “orientalia” and/or “aegyptiaca.” They have been embedded as the stimuli of the so-called “Orientalizing” phenomenon—a 19th-century paradigm and enduring trend in scholarship that interprets aspects of culture as originating in the east and moving westward during the early first millennium. Focus was limited to identifying their geographical places of manufacture and attempting to reveal the identities of the dedicators. This paradigm limits attention to the origins of such objects and restricts interpretations of them to one-directional understandings of artistic “influence.” Informed by theories of materiality, modes of acquisition, the exchange of skilled crafting knowledge, and the movement of raw materials, finished products, craftspeople as well as their patrons in the eastern Mediterranean cosmos during the 7th and 6th centuries, this dissertation approaches the corpus through object biographies. It foregrounds three case studies—Cypriot style terracotta figurines from the Heraion of Samos, Egyptian sculptures from East Greek sanctuaries, and the composite North Syrian and Cretan sphyrelata korai from Olympia—to temper the broader theoretical discussions of intercultural artistic exchange during this time. The study explores a diverse array of artistic processes of material transformation ranging from the destruction, reuse, adaptation, and modification of objects to the local production of objects that can be stylistically linked to places far afield. By examining the materials from which and the manufacturing techniques by which such objects were made, it reevaluates where, when, and by whom they were crafted. The analysis identifies the tangible processes of artistic transmission to illuminate the exchanges of and interactions among the eastern Mediterranean craftspeople tasked with the fabrication of the dedications and the patrons who commissioned them. Ultimately, as singular artistic products, it is argued that the objects in the case studies represent intercultural attempts at unique votive object manufacture and communicate meaning by inhabiting more than one geographical space and temporally remote moments in time.